So Occupy is starting to cause waves in UK media I see... two resignations from the clergy.
I'm not particularly inclined towards any side of the arguments that the OLSX movement raises, but I definitely stand by their right to make that argument in a public space as and how they see fit -- certainly as they have been doing so peacefully.
There is a real malignant narrative permeating the media today, even the BBC, in which they have been interviewing protestors and trying to malign them as distrustful and shameful by a) asking those masked to reveal their identities and b) asking them whether or not they feel bad about two clergymen voluntarily resigning. Firstly, fuck off BBC - they don't have to tell you who they are, and secondly, at least one of those men had every sympathy with the protestors and is resigning because he feels struggling to reconcile his feelings and responsibilities makes his position is untenable: ie. it has nothing whatsoever to do with individual protestors, and they shouldn't be made to feel responsible.
What really fucking pisses me off is David Cameron wading into this and saying they would look at legal ways to remove them, maybe even changes to the law. I remember this berk slamming Labour for being overly-reactionary and overly-legislative, and now he is behaving just like they did! Yes, there is Church property being occupied and a road being occupied, but since when do we allow the Government or the Highways Agency to dictate to us on what makes effective grounds for staging a protest? These are public places. Protest is a form of civil disobedience, there are no codes of conduct for deciding the most effective staging ground... it stinks of "oh yes, of course you have a voice, but if you'd be so good as to use it quietly over there where you won't be heard, that would be great. Chop chop!"...
It will loathe some people for them to read me making this comparison, but it kind of reminds me of Mubarak not liking the protestors staying in Tahrir Square, or the Chinese not taking too kindly to the students in Tiananmen Square... of course it's not okay to try to remove people or move them on with extreme force, but is legislating some daffy law to say they can't stay overnight or use tents really that much better? You are still stifling peoples' right to protest.
All the right wing posters on Have Your Say (the BBC forum for their stories) are trying to say "enough is enough", and are also blaming the protestors for the resignations, they are whining on about the inconvenience its causing people who might have liked to use that road or might have liked to visit St Paul's without all the liberal riff-raff about... honest to fucking god, they could not be more partisan or transparent. I know for a fact that friends of mine, normal, everyday, fully employed people - one of whom is a very well paid teacher - have been to the protests, yet to read the BBC you'd think everyone was a fucking benefit scrounger. People have been taking it in 'shifts' to occupy the area, indeed, that is the entire idea behind the protest... if that road is so important, why isn't there a groundswell of counter protest and people trying to go there and reason with them to move on? If the church property is being disrespected, why has the church and many of its members actually been quite supportive, and why has its management not spoken out?
Some people are reasonably asking themselves why the protestors aren't moving to Canary Wharf and other such places -- but many of the potentially more effective venues are private estates where their presence would not be tolerated by police and private security firms. They DID set up protest outside the exchange and they were moved. They were invited to set up outside St Pauls. The current position of the protest is clever not just because it has drawn the Church and the rest of the country into the debate, but it also invites us to call into question the morality of our politics, the morality of our capitalism -- not to say bring in an alternative to that capitalism -- but to say, are we being of good faith to one another and living up to those old, famed Christian ideals in our implementation of it?...
To be honest, I don't feel particularly moved to support the Occupy movement (yet) - but I'll defend their right to protest to the death. This idea of intefering with protest, controlling it, legislating if necessary, dictating when and where it can occur -- this is the slipperiest of slippery slopes.
I hate the idea of anyone in the political class or corporate world dictating the terms of our right to protest.
Our grandfathers and their fathers before them fought and died on the bloody fields of war so that we could have freedoms such as these. In this age of utter apathy, we shouldn't be so quick to try and silence, denigrate, defame and slander people who are simply acting on their beliefs -- especially when their aims are a fairer world for the great bulk of us. I mean, at least these people care about their country and their fellow man and are actually out trying to achieve something. As sloppy and as indirect as their message often is, at least they're doing something. Everyone who is trying to make them out as smelly, hippy, idealist benefit cheats or something makes me fucking sick.
